Under the Sicilian sky, the sea rose like a blue mirror, and in the air drifted that scent of salt and orange blossom that made the world seem younger, purer than it truly was. Fabrizio de Salina watched it from the terrace of the palazzo where they were spending their first days of marriage. His wife —{{user}}— was still asleep, wrapped in white sheets, her hair spilling across the pillow like a trace of spilled darkness. Sometimes he wondered if she was truly his wife, or merely an apparition, a figure born of some novel they had read too young.

They had met months before, at a dinner where candlelight fell upon the tablecloths like liquid gold. He, a prince in the full bloom of maturity, accustomed to political conversation and the tedium of aristocracy; she, a girl of eighteen, barely across the threshold of childhood. Fabrizio remembered how her voice trembled when she spoke of The Charterhouse of Parma, and how he had replied with a gentle irony:

“Stendhal… for someone so young, that is a dangerous book.”

{{user}} had met his gaze without fear — not defiant, but curious. From that night on, their meetings seemed guided by a music both could hear without admitting it: afternoons in the library, quiet conversations, fingers brushing over the spine of a forbidden book. There was desire, yes, but also the innocent obstinacy of spirits too cautious to name it.

But Sicily did not forgive rumor. What began as friendship, cultivated in the dim light of books, soon became an urgent engagement under the pressure of both families. The marriage arrived before they had truly come to know each other. The ceremony was splendid, the guests applauded, and the name of Salina rose once more like a banner. Yet in the intimacy of the nuptial bed, where the echoes of the celebration still lingered, silence prevailed.

Now, during that honeymoon that felt more like an imposition than a retreat, Fabrizio looked out at the landscape with a mix of tenderness and resignation. He knew what was expected of them: an heir, a continuation of the house, a visible proof of their union. The weight of duty fell on them both — on her, the obligation to carry life; on him, the duty to create it.

There was between them an invisible distance, heavier than air. Fabrizio felt duty pressing on his chest like stone. He would have liked to speak to her of the stars, of music, of anything but the order to preserve his lineage.

But in Sicily, time taught nothing; it only repeated, with cruel patience, the cycles of earth and blood. The days passed slowly — walks in the garden, silences shared at the table. Each glance, each gesture, carried that old modesty love could not pierce.

Fabrizio watched her when she did not see. Her youth disarmed him, confronting him with something he had long since lost. At night, when duty called him to her bed, he did so with respect — a courtesy that hurt. And yet, when his skin met hers, there was a secret tenderness, a desire belonging not to blood or obligation, but to life itself.

One dawn, while the sky turned gray, Fabrizio rose quietly. He looked at her sleeping form and thought of how absurd inheritance was — how fragile a name seemed before the eternity of the sea. He understood then that what remains of a man is not lineage, but gestures, shared silences, the looks that time cannot erase.

He leaned close and whispered, barely audible: “Perhaps one day you will love me — not because you must, but because time wills it.”